The talk over the past couple of weeks has been about the Microsoft bid for Yahoo! Other than Flickr, does anyone still use Yahoo!? Okay, I’m sure plenty of people do - actually my wife and I use the Yahoo! address book because we’re still waiting for Google to come out with a viable alternative.
Today, I sat down to create a Yahoo! account for my three year old. Acutally, all I wanted was a Flickr account - but of course that requires you to create a Yahoo! account. No big deal, I can live with that. From 
the Flickr page I clicked on the Create Your Account button (which it claims, “only takes a moment with your Yahoo! ID). That took me to the Sign in to Yahoo! page. I tracked down the “Don’t have a Yahoo! ID?” section and clicked on the Sign Up link.
That took me to the Yahoo! home page, which seemed a bit odd, and annoying, to me. From there I didn’t see any obvious “sign up for Yahoo!” links but there was one that said, “Free mail: Sign Up.” Not exactly what I wanted (I don’t want or need a Yahoo! email account) but I figured it would help me get a Flickr account. Click. Back to Yahoo! home page. Click again (maybe I blinked). Back to Yahoo! home page. Are you kidding me?
This is a company that is supposed to be worth $50 Billion? Either they’re assume everyone on Earth already has a Yahoo! account or someone is asleep at the wheel. How could an error like this ever make it out onto the live Yahoo! site? How could it sustain on the live site for more than a few minutes?
Update: Well, the link seems to be working now. I’m not sure how long it was busted - I tried several times over the course of about 30 minutes.